


outside the day is up and calling

by wearealltalesintheend



Series: Jason Todd Birhday Week 2018 [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Humor, Mornings Are Hard, Slice of Life, bizarro's moving ship, shh lets all forget RHATO 25 and move on, someone get this man a coffee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 10:47:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15661683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearealltalesintheend/pseuds/wearealltalesintheend
Summary: “Why don’t we have any coffee?” Jason asks, confused. On his sleep-clouded mind, it makes no sense, so he asks again, louder. “Guys, why there’s no coffee?”A voice drifts from the room next door, which he has no idea what it is. Bizarro’s ship has so many rooms, and so many doors, and it all changes constantly– just slightly, just to confuse him, Jason is sure. Sometimes, this goddamn ship feels like it’s out to get him, specifically him. “Because you forgot to buy it.” A pause, then almost as an afterthought, “idiot.”Ah, that’s Artemis then. Bizarro is much nicer."or, alternatively, Jason is on a quest, and Artemis and Bizarro are unhelpful in very different ways.Jason Todd's Birthday Week: Day 4 -Slice of Life.





	outside the day is up and calling

“Why don’t we have any coffee?” Jason asks, confused. On his sleep-clouded mind, it makes no sense, so he asks again, louder. “Guys, why there’s no coffee?”

 

A voice drifts from the room next door, which he has no idea what it is. Bizarro’s ship has so many rooms, and so many doors, and it all changes constantly– just slightly, just to confuse him, Jason is sure. Sometimes, this goddamn ship feels like it’s out to get him, specifically him. “Because you forgot to buy it.” A pause, then almost as an afterthought, “ _ idiot.” _

 

Ah, that’s Artemis then. Bizarro is much nicer. A crashing sound follows her voice, and then another. It must be a training room, even though Jason could swear it had been a theater yesterday. And another living room the day before that.

 

Breakfast. Focus.  _ Coffee.  _ Jason stands in the middle of their incredibly nice kitchen and frowns, trying to remember the last time he went shopping. It had been a Wednesday, he thinks. He had bought Bizarro’s cereal, and milk. And a carton of eggs, too. And Artemis’ ridiculous soy milk. And coffee. Jason can  _ see  _ the coffee beans sitting on his cart. 

 

“No, I did buy ‘em,” he tells the other room, “they were in the same bag with the cereal, I think.”

 

The crashing sounds stops. Artemis pokes her head out of the door, giving him a flat look, “then they should be with the cereal in one of the cabinets. I don’t know, you go look for it.” She looks back inside the room, frowns, “I’m busy.”

 

Jason kind of hates her unhelpfulness sometimes. “Well, I’m not the one who put the groceries away.”

 

“ _ Busy _ ,” Artemis says, and closes the door. 

 

Without much else to do, Jason goes to check the cabinets. He finds Bizarro’s new favorite cereal, his  _ old  _ favorite cereal, a bag of flour, a weird-looking potato with sprouting roots, and one of his helmets. He rescues the potato, relocating it to a tupperware whose lid had been lost since last week, and fills it with water. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? He leaves it on the counter, someone else can deal with it later.

 

He considers asking Bizarro, but figures the big guy is probably busy with something more important than Jason’s wayward coffee. He usually is, even if Jason doesn’t like to bring it up, even if Artemis frowns so hard her whole face scrunches up.

 

Unsurprisingly, the kitchen has no clock, because if it had, it would have been  _ helpful _ and god forbid anything on this ship be helpful towards  _ Jason _ . Patting his pockets down, he realizes he left his phone on his room, and, of course, that sweatpants don’t have pockets.

 

There is no crashing sounds anymore, and Jason worries. Mildly. Enough that he knocks on the door. No response. He knocks again, empty mug still clutched on his other hand. Still nothing. He tries the doorknob and it turns easily on his hand. 

 

Inside, there’s no sign of Artemis, or whatever she had been doing. In fact, it’s not even a gym as Jason had assumed. Instead, it’s an unused guest bedroom, furniture covered in white sheets and lone cobwebs. Looking down, Jason finds he’s stepping on a cheerful  _ Welcome!  _ Doormat, and he idly wonders how the spiders got inside the ship, or if Bizarro made them up, as a creepily realistic home decor.

 

“Uh,” he says to the empty room. Turning around, Jason startles, having almost run into a wall. The door, he notices, is a few feet to his left.

 

Jason scowls, hugs his mug closer to his chest, as sets out to find his missing coffee. Going out to Starbucks for fancy sounding, watered down coffee would be a slow kind of death right now.

 

*

 

This isn’t a labyrinth. And Jason isn’t Theseus, he doesn’t need a red thread to walk around his own ship, sort of. His own  _ headquarter. _ His very own  _ floating  _ headquarter.

 

And if the rooms keep changing, slightly, to mess with his head, that’s just because his giant, floating, headquarter is a bit of an asshole. It happens. Once when they were kids, Jason saw Dick walk right into a glass door on the Titans Tower. Roy had laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world and Wally had fallen off the couch, giggling. This is the same thing, sort of. The same  _ spirit. _

 

In any case, Jason walks carefully, narrowing his eyes at each new room, just in case. Maybe if he glares hard enough, the ship will stop being so assholerish. He gives up quickly, though, because this is Bizarro’s weird ass ship, and it feels like glaring at Bizarro. And that’s just– no, you just can’t glare at him.

 

The kitchen he had already thoroughly checked, and the empty room behind him is also clearly a bust, so that leaves the door at his right, opposite the counter. It leads him to a hallway he vaguely remembers walking on. Their pantry is behind one of these doors, Jason thinks, although he’s not sure which.

 

A bathroom is the first thing he finds, and he checks it superficially, just to say he didn’t miss anything. There’s a toad living in the sink, but Jason would rather not think about that.

 

Next, is a living room, with a TV and no sockets in the wall, a lava lamp next to it, and a black-and-white striped couch in the middle of the room.  A white rabbit hops cheerfully from cushion to cushion. The carpet is very fluffy, though, so that’s always a plus.

 

Finally, the pantry. It’s dark, even after switches on the lone lightbulb on the ceiling, and the air is hot and stuffy. It leaves him feeling a little claustrophobic, twitchy, and it dawns on him with a dispassionate kind of surprise that he lost his mug somewhere between the kitchen and here.

 

But that’s not important. Jason starts looking, rummaging through the scarcely filled shelves. They needed to go shopping more often, really. Actually,  _ Artemis  _ should go shopping more often. Jason’s pretty sure he’s the only one doing grocery runs right now. How does he manage to always find the least functional adults to team with is beyond him.

 

The time is still an unknown quantity for him, but whatever hour it is, it’s still too early for a scavenger hunt. He frowns, “Bizarro,” Jason calls, giving up, “where’s the fucking coffee?”

 

“There is a bag of coffee beans presently inside one of the kitchen’s cabinets, Jason.”

 

Jason startles, suddenly glad he isn’t holding his mug anymore. Bizarro, or rather, his hologram, is standing beside him, smiling beatifically down at him. It still somehow conveys an unsettling amount of condescendence. “What the hell.”

 

“You are confused, I see,” the hologram says, adjusting its glasses, “I am an interactive interface programmed to help you with anything you might need.”

 

A ripple runs through the entire image, blurring it in waves. Jason subconsciously takes a step back. “I looked in the kitchen, it’s not there.”

 

“I assure you, Jason,” the AI tells him, “it is. You must not have looked very well.”

 

Taking a deep breath, he visualizes Dick running into the wall. Roy laughing like a maniac. It’s the same thing. Sometimes, your HQ can be a prat. “Fine. Thanks. I’ll look again.”

 

“It is no problem, this is what I am here for, after all. My systems have detected you are having trouble navigating the ship. Would you like me to guide you to the main kitchen?”

 

“No, I’m good.” Jason says, already leaving the claustrophobic pantry behind, “you can go now.”

 

The trek back is incredibly easy, all rooms are exactly where they are supposed to be, probably just to spite him further. In the living room, though, he finds another bunny joined the first in sitting on the striped couch, fluffy white ears twitching. There’s a question here, and perhaps some other time Jason will allow himself to ask, but for now he looks at them, and goes on to the next room. Maybe tomorrow, or next Tuesday might be a good day to deal with this.

 

Walking into the kitchen, Jason curses loudly, scowling.

 

“What’s the matter, Jason?” Artemis asks, her perfectly braided hair neatly tucked in a bun. She calmly sips on her mug, raising one eyebrow, “you look a little stressed.”

 

He glares fiercely. “What the shit, Artemis.”

 

“I do not understand,” she says, sipping again on her coffee. “Is this about the hummingbird on one of the gyms? Because I already let it out this morning.”

 

“There was a hummingbird in the gym?”

 

“In  _ one _ of the gyms,” Artemis corrects him, “but yes, I suppose we do have a pet problem.”

 

“Right?” Jason agrees, thinking back on the toad and the creepy cobwebs, “I’m not the only one seeing it, then?”

 

“No,” she pauses, rests her mug on the table. It’s their obnoxiously yellow mug, even though Jason is sure he threw that away last week. “I think it’s the old Bizarro showing in the new.”

 

Jason frowns. “He’s still Bizarro.”

 

“Yes, in a way, I suppose.” 

 

“That’s not the point,” he argues, before they get too sidetracked, “how did you get the coffee?”

 

“It was on the cabinets, beside the cereal,” she shrugs, “there was also a can of tomato soup. It looked absolutely disgusting, so I threw it away.”

 

“It was on the– okay. Fine. Too early for this shit,” Jason supposes there  _ are  _ better things he could be doing with his time. Like getting  _ coffee _ . “Where’s it?”

 

Artemis pauses, thinking. Then her face clears, and she says without a hint of apology, “oh, this was the last cup, I think. We need to buy more.”

 

“You have got to be kidding me.”

 

“It wouldn’t do you much good, anyway,” she continues, “if you’re stressed.”

 

“I’m stressed because this ship keeps moving around like Hogwarts’ goddamn staircases!”

 

“Don’t be melodramatic,” Artemis rolls her eyes, “start leaving breadcrumbs if you’re so worried. Or a red thread, like Ariadne.”

 

“I’m pretty sure none of those stories end well,” Jason says, “I’m pretty sure there is dying involved.”

 

She yawns, getting to her feet. Her chair screeches against the tiled floor. “Then you’re already one step ahead.” She carries her mug to the sink, leaving it there, unwashed. “Anyway, I have to go.”

 

Jason watches it all unfold, numb. “Buy coffee while you’re out,” he says, but it comes out kind of like a sob. Maybe Tim has a point, maybe hiding caffeine stashes on his bedroom isn’t as insane as it sounds.

 

Artemis doesn’t answer him, just leaves the kitchen, walking purposefully into the next hallway. Jason tries checking the time, but his sweatpants are still pocket-less and his phone is still somewhere in his room, possibly on his bedside table. 

 

On the counter, the rooting potato is still there, sprouting roots. Jason considers throwing it in the trash, but dismisses the thought. He already put too much work on it to call it garbage now. Picking it up, he decides to take it to his bedroom, only to transfer it into a vase, and names it Simon. Simon, the Sprouting Potato.

 

Maybe they do have a pet problem.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> hey you made it! if you liked it, maybe leave a kudo or a comment? Those seriously make my day!
> 
> or, you can come talk to me on [my tumblr](http://wearealltalesintheend.tumblr.com/)
> 
> and hey? thanks.


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